Kelly Rutherford Says She Called Police on Her Husband

Kelly Rutherford says she twice called the police on estranged husband Daniel Giersch recently, adding the German entrepreneur frightened her and yelled at her within inches of her face, court documents reveal.

The couple have been mired in an increasingly nasty divorce and are battling over the welfare of their son, Hermes, 2. Rutherford, 40, is four months pregnant with their second child, a daughter.

The first time Rutherford called police occurred when the couple were staying at the Wales Hotel in New York “because [he] kept yelling at me in front of Hermes, and threatening that he was going to take Hermes,” she said in the Jan. 16 court filing. “[He] kept saying that I was ‘going to learn,’ and that he was ‘going to teach [me] a lesson.'”

She adds that Giersch is “an avid boxer and a kickboxer, and I am intimidated by him.”

About one or two months later in Los Angeles, Giersch “had cornered me and come within inches of my face. He would not back away,” Rutherford claims in the court papers. “I was crying and [he] was yelling at me. I remember [him] again saying that I was ‘going to learn’ and he was again threatening to take Hermes away.'”

Both times the police asked Giersch, 34, to leave, and apparently no arrests were made, according to documents.

In response to the new court filing, Giersch released a statement to PEOPLE through his lawyer, Fahi Takesh Hallin. “I don’t want to comment because all of these accusations from Kelly are false and are intended to damage my reputation,” says the statement. “I am solely seeking what is in our children’s best interest.”

Rutherford’s attorney, Lance Spiegel, has a policy not to comment to media. But her rep, Patrick McCarthy, released a statement critical of Giersch.

“Kelly is focusing on what is in the best interest of her family and trying to bring as much normalcy to their lives as possible during this difficult time,” the statement says. “The statements being made by her husband Daniel Giersch are completely fabricated and Kelly is a loving and caring individual and a wonderful mother.”

Rutherford is seeking to ban Giersch from traveling outside the U.S. with Hermes as well as seeking permission to take the child with her to New York until March, when the current season of Gossip Girl completes filming.

Giersch, meanwhile, has asserted that her stressful working conditions have been detrimental to their child, that she is the one with anger issues, and that he has been Hermes’s primary caretaker all along – all of which she disputes.